The question

How much is a Blue Peter badge worth?

On eBay at four o'clock yesterday afternoon, somewhere between 99p and £112. This honours-for-sale business has gone too far. It's one thing to purchase a peerage, but picking up a Blue Peter badge on eBay is just scummy.

It's also stupid. The point of a badge is that a child has to earn it, by sending in "an interesting letter, a good idea for the programme, a poem or a story". The whole ethos of Blue Peter, at 47 years old the longest-running children's programme in the world, is about being wholesome and resourceful: cutting cardboard, not corners.

Superficially, the show has moved with the times - hiring a beauty queen as a presenter, playing hit singles in the background, and setting a period- costume Christmas story, to the bafflement of many viewers, in an office in 1980s Manhattan. But behind Konnie's skimpy tops and Gethin's famously waxed chest the heart of Lord Reith beats still. While the retail world presses us to spend more and more on card occasions, Blue Peter says, "Make your mum a card and present in one!" with the Mother's Day brooch card.

It's hard to say who is more morally dubious: the badge winners who have gone on to eBay to flog their little trophies, or the parents who are willing to buy one for their little treasure. They've seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: what on earth makes them want to be Mr Salt, timidly indulging Veruca's every whim?

The British will, of course, do anything for a bargain, and the Blue Peter badge, older fans were surprised to find yesterday, has a new incarnation as a discount card. It can get the holder in free to dozens of tourist attractions, ranging from Hampton Court Palace to the British Lawnmower Museum in Southport. A family with two badges living in the north-west could save £100 on summer-holiday outings. And while the idea of the nation's finest young letter-writers being rewarded with a free look round the World of Beatrix Potter in Bowness-on- Windermere is an appealing one, perhaps this is where the rot set in. A Blue Peter badge, like virtue itself, should be its own reward.

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